Content marketing is a rapidly evolving discipline within the field of digital marketing. As consumer trends shift and change virtually every week, you need to constantly update your approach to connect meaninfully with your customers.
But what strategies and tactics can you apply in order to do so? Enter Targeted Content Marketing.
Targeted content marketing can help you to stay relevant regardless of wider trends. It can help you to understand your target audiences better, while personalising your content to meet their needs. Indeed, refining your approach to meet the needs of consumers can boost your brand loyalty and lead to higher repeat sales.
Targeted content marketing can also help you to connect with new audiences while bolstering brand loyalty among existing consumers. Folks want to feel valued by your brand and are far more likely to stick around if they feel that you understand their needs.
In this article, we will cover three distinct ways to improve targeting in your content marketing strategy:
- Capture the Voice of the Customer
- Leverage on Generational Marketing
- Dive into Data Analytics
Voice of the Customer
You should start strategizing targeted content marketing by capturing the Voice of the Customer. Understanding the VoC can help you better understand consumers’ needs, wants, and expectations. A strong sense of the VoC can also help you garner creative solutions to complex problems, as consumer feedback is key to improving your product or service.
Understanding the Voice of the Customer (VoC) can also improve your business operations. Tapping into the VoC is a great way to generate new products and ideas, increase your lead generation, and improve your customer experience.
Your marketing department can capture the VoC by doing the following:
- Interviews: Customer interviews yield invaluable qualitative feedback. Consumers can tell you how, exactly, your content makes them feel and may even suggest solutions you’d never previously considered.
- On-Site Surveys: If you have a brick-and-mortar location, consider surveying consumers to learn about their preferences. This is particularly helpful if you want to trial-run a prototype or content style before you start to sell it to a wider audience.
- Live Chats: Consumers who log on to live chats can be hit or miss. However, the sheer volume of online conversations means that this may be a lucrative place to gather important insights about the VoC.
- Social Media: Social media is a goldmine for VoC research. Folks feel comfortable talking about their experience with your brand online and are happy to answer any follow-up questions you may have. Consider investing in a social listening tool if you want to maximize the insights you can glean from social platforms.
Accurate VoC feedback can guide your marketing strategy and help you connect with consumers. However, you’ll need to routinely update your VoC insights if you want to stay relevant. The VoC is constantly in flux due to external factors and shifting consumer preferences.
Generational Marketing
Every generation has unique consumption habits and content expectations. A short-form, ethos-driven film may land well with Gen Z consumers but accidentally alienate Baby Boomers who come across your brand.
As such, it’s critical that you get generational marketing right when trying to target your content to a particular audience.
You can use generational marketing to your advantage by understanding the broad differences between generations. For example:
- Gen Z: Young people are regarded as digital natives and are extremely savvy web users. As such, your content marketing needs to be authentic, value-based, and video-centric. Consider using social media influencers on platforms like TikTok and Instagram to help you to connect with young consumers on social media.
- Millennials: Millennials (also known as Gen Ys) look for well-reviewed, experience-based content marketing. This means that giveaways and Google reviews are a must. If you’re struggling to generate traction, consider running a reward system or a discount for folks who leave reviews.
- Gen-X: Older folks enjoy a blend of traditional media and online marketing. Target your content to them by foregrounding quality and educational “behind-the-scenes” style content.
- Baby Boomers: 60+ consumers are late adopters of technology, but still enjoy shopping online. Increase your appeal by running campaigns that have loyalty programs and pertain to health, financial security, and a senior lifestyle.
Generational marketing can improve the relevancy of your content and may improve your ROI. However, it’s important to avoid stereotypes when trying to connect with consumers from a particular generation. Some Baby Boomers will enjoy influencer marketing, while some Gen-Zers will be turned away by aggressive advertisements on TikTok.
Instead, use data analytics to inform your content marketing strategy. This can aid customer segmentation efforts and help you create more accurate target marketing.
Data Analytics
Qualitative feedback (surveys, interviews, etc.) ensures that you “hear” the Voice of the Customer. This ensures that your marketing is relevant to your target audience and can improve customer segmentation efforts.
However, you still need to double-check your qualitative findings with data analytics. Here are some ways to use data in order to be more targeted in your content marketing efforts:
- Customer Segmentation: Craft content that appeals to specific customer groups based on their preferences and behaviors.
- Keyword Analysis: Use keyword analysis to optimize content for SEO, attracting more organic traffic.
- Sentiment Analysis: Utilize sentiment analysis to understand and adapt to audience reactions to different content.
- Predictive Analytics: Leverage predictive analytics to anticipate future trends and create relevant content.
- Content Performance Metrics: Track and analyze performance metrics to focus on creating content that resonates with the audience.
- Social Media Analytics: Monitor social media analytics to shape content strategies aligned with audience engagement patterns.
- Geo-Targeting: Employ geo-targeting to develop content that resonates with specific regional and local audiences.
Data analytics gives you “hard” evidence and can support your decision to invest in developing different types of content or buying a new email management system. VoC data can be fed into AI machine learning algorithms too. This improves the veracity of your findings and helps you leverage big data when drawing up your content marketing calendar.
Conclusion
Targeted content marketing can help you connect with consumers and improve your understanding of the wider market. Start by conducting Voice of the Customer research to learn more about the folks who engage with your content. Use data analytics to confirm your findings, and follow up with tailored marketing that accounts for generational differences.
BIO: Ainsley Lawrence is a freelance writer from the Pacific Northwest in the United States. She enjoys writing about better living through education and technology. She is frequently lost in a mystery podcast.
It’s clear that content marketing is changing rapidly, and knowing how to target content effectively is important. I really liked how it emphasized the importance of understanding the “voice of the customer.” Content must meet the desires of the audience.
This article on “Strategies for Targeted Content Marketing” is a goldmine of insights for anyone looking to elevate their content marketing game. In a world where content is king, the importance of delivering content that resonates with your target audience cannot be overstated.
The strategies outlined in this article are not just theoretical concepts; they are actionable steps that can make a significant difference in content marketing success.
First and foremost, the emphasis on audience research and segmentation is crucial. Understanding your target audience’s needs, preferences, and pain points is the foundation upon which effective content marketing is built. The article’s suggestion of creating detailed buyer personas is spot-on; it helps personalize content to meet the specific needs of different customer segments.